The North Korean army threatened on Friday to carry out a ‘merciless military strike’ against South Korea next week, in a serious escalation of cross-border tensions. The Korean People’s Army [KPA] vowed to initiate the strike if a group of North Korean defectors now living in the South went ahead with plans to scatter propaganda leaflets next Monday from balloons floated over the border.
‘The moment a minor movement for the scattering is captured... a merciless military strike by the Western Front will be put into practice without warning,’ the KPA said in a statement carried on the official Korean Central News Agency.
Residents in and around the area where the activists plan to launch their balloons should ‘evacuate in anticipation of possible damage’, the statement said.
‘The surrounding area will become targets of direct firing of the KPA,’ the statement said, adding: ‘The KPA never makes empty talk.’
A group of North Korean defectors plan to carry out the leafleting exercise on 22 October at the border near the town of Paju, around 60 kilometres north of Seoul.
Such exercises are relatively common and North Korea has threatened action in the past, but on Friday’s statement was unusually strong with its specific naming of the time and location, coupled with the evacuation warning.
It comes at a time of heightened border tensions, and a day after South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak made a surprise visit to an island close to the disputed maritime border that was shelled by Pyongyang two years ago.
During his visit, Lee told troops stationed on the island that they should ‘fight to the death’ to protect the border and ‘retaliate strongly’ in the event of any North Korea provocation. There have been widespread concerns in the South that Pyongyang may try to instigate a military clash that would temporarily destabilise the Korean peninsula in the run up to South Korea’s presidential election in December.
On Wednesday, South Korea announced an annual, large-scale military exercise aimed at countering threats from North Korea. The week-long Hoguk exercise beginning October 25 will involve 240,000 army, navy, air force and marine corps personnel, with 500 US soldiers also taking part.
Some 28,500 US military personnel are stationed in the South a legacy of the Korean War that ended with a ceasefire but not a peace treaty.
KIM JONG-UN IS DICTATOR: NEPHEW
Kim Jong-Il’s teenage grandson has labelled his uncle, North Korea’s new leader Kim Jong-Un, a ‘dictator’ in an interview that offers a rare glimpse into the world’s most secretive ruling dynasty.
During the interview, conducted at the school in Bosnia where he studies, Kim Han-Sol, 17, spoke of his desire to ‘make things better’ for the Korean people.
Sporting wide, black-frame glasses, two studs in his left ear and a fashionable haircut, Kim also talked of his close friendships with South Korean and US students and his hopes for the Korean peninsula’s reunification.
Born in Pyongyang in 1995, Kim described a lonely early childhood, spent mostly in the home of his mother’s family - isolated from the grandfather he never actually met and who died in December last year.
‘The moment a minor movement for the scattering is captured... a merciless military strike by the Western Front will be put into practice without warning,’ the KPA said in a statement carried on the official Korean Central News Agency.
Residents in and around the area where the activists plan to launch their balloons should ‘evacuate in anticipation of possible damage’, the statement said.
‘The surrounding area will become targets of direct firing of the KPA,’ the statement said, adding: ‘The KPA never makes empty talk.’
A group of North Korean defectors plan to carry out the leafleting exercise on 22 October at the border near the town of Paju, around 60 kilometres north of Seoul.
Such exercises are relatively common and North Korea has threatened action in the past, but on Friday’s statement was unusually strong with its specific naming of the time and location, coupled with the evacuation warning.
It comes at a time of heightened border tensions, and a day after South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak made a surprise visit to an island close to the disputed maritime border that was shelled by Pyongyang two years ago.
During his visit, Lee told troops stationed on the island that they should ‘fight to the death’ to protect the border and ‘retaliate strongly’ in the event of any North Korea provocation. There have been widespread concerns in the South that Pyongyang may try to instigate a military clash that would temporarily destabilise the Korean peninsula in the run up to South Korea’s presidential election in December.
On Wednesday, South Korea announced an annual, large-scale military exercise aimed at countering threats from North Korea. The week-long Hoguk exercise beginning October 25 will involve 240,000 army, navy, air force and marine corps personnel, with 500 US soldiers also taking part.
Some 28,500 US military personnel are stationed in the South a legacy of the Korean War that ended with a ceasefire but not a peace treaty.
KIM JONG-UN IS DICTATOR: NEPHEW
Kim Jong-Il’s teenage grandson has labelled his uncle, North Korea’s new leader Kim Jong-Un, a ‘dictator’ in an interview that offers a rare glimpse into the world’s most secretive ruling dynasty.
During the interview, conducted at the school in Bosnia where he studies, Kim Han-Sol, 17, spoke of his desire to ‘make things better’ for the Korean people.
Sporting wide, black-frame glasses, two studs in his left ear and a fashionable haircut, Kim also talked of his close friendships with South Korean and US students and his hopes for the Korean peninsula’s reunification.
Born in Pyongyang in 1995, Kim described a lonely early childhood, spent mostly in the home of his mother’s family - isolated from the grandfather he never actually met and who died in December last year.